


I Never Said I Was Looking For Absolution

by catteo



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Bloodplay, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-19 04:39:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catteo/pseuds/catteo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody leaves so Damon pulls the dagger out</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Never Said I Was Looking For Absolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waltzmatildah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/gifts).



The silence in the house is dank and oppressive. It envelops him. Dragging at his body like soft, dark molasses. Everything suddenly viewed in slow motion. Fractured moonlight. Limbs unwieldy. Thoughts listless and half-formed. Vital memories flash through his mind in a heartbeat and slip through his fingers like saltwater. Harsh, cold and never-ending. Impossible to hold long enough to prevent them rushing away. He stopped trying weeks ago. 

His brother and Katherine gone without him. Fled into the night leaving him less than half of what he was. Echoes inside a hollow heart. The larger part of him gone with them. He sees Elena, whispering the possibility of a new future, with warm hands on his face. His mind pulls back from what comes after. Rage and pain and shattered hopes. Endings.

//

He’s not sure how his feet have carried him to the basement. How his body has decided that this is how he needs to move on. He pulls his mind sluggishly back to the present. Away from ruined yesterdays and shattered tomorrows. Figures that if anybody will understand the emptiness inside it’ll be her. She will be the one who can finally explain how love and hate feel the same.

Her prom dress is vibrant in the muted colours of his mind. Vivid against the grey of her skin and the soft shadows. An unavoidable echo of better times, smothered now by everything that followed. But he needs something, _someone_ , to break this silence. To help him understand the devastation that lives just under his skin. He grasps the dagger, warm, a promise in his hands. Pulls. Waits.

//

Her awakening is not as dramatic as he feared. A sharp, indrawn breath punctuates the quiet. Green eyes flash open, searching. Lock on his. He answers the question he sees in them with a shrug. Can’t seem to find the words to explain that they’re alone in this. That they’ve been swept aside by the inevitability of changed fates and altered loyalties. Abandoned in an overwhelmingly foreign present. He wonders if the sorrow he sees on her face is a mirror image of his own. 

_“My brother?”  
“Alive.”  
“My father?”  
“Dead.”_

He wonders again at the similarities between them. Recognises relief in the way her shoulders fall, tension dissipating. Knows that she’ll grieve for them both as she tries to hold her broken heart together. Wants to tell her that he understands, he knows what it is to mourn, but he can’t seem to shuffle words into their proper places. Offers her his hand instead. Ignores the tears he sees in her eyes as he leads her out of the darkness. 

//

He expects her to turn on him. To rage about the way she ended up lying on a damp floor in a frozen second. But she seems to know that they are both lost, forsaken and utterly alone. He wants to tell her that it will get better, that each betrayal is easier than the last. That with each piece of yourself that is misplaced it becomes easier to leave it behind. But he knows she wouldn’t believe him. He doesn’t believe it himself. He knows what it is to live only because someone else asks it of you. 

//

There’s a quiet stillness about her now. They sit in the night, a matched pair, neither able to express their regrets. Their failures. The times they held on too tight. The times they let go. Were left behind. Disappointed others.

_“Do you miss them?”_

He thinks about lying to her. The way the words would taste in his mouth as he utters his denial. All sharp tang and bitter salt. Like blood on his tongue. Hears the truth.

_“Yes.”  
“Me too.”_

He realises that it’s the most honest he’s been in months. He misses them all. There’s a constant ache from the absent pieces of him. A feeling as though he’s standing on a ledge, about to stumble. Like he wants to fling himself out into nothing. He thinks about the bright burn of soft yellow sun. Knows he’ll never be able to let go. She offers him a half-smile from across the room. It doesn’t reach her eyes. He feels like he’s falling.

//

It’s a slow awakening. They drag themselves gradually from the torpor that has worked its way under their skin. Into their veins. It’s nothing like normal, but it’s better than their shared heartache. They talk about family and forgotten moments. She tells him about his brother in another time and place. The way _her_ brother looked when she made her choice. The price she paid for loving another more. They always love his brother more.

The guilt of giving her the same punishment for the same choices threatens to overwhelm him. The words of his apology stick in his throat, a ball of blazing remorse that almost chokes him. He takes her hand instead. Tries to convey an endless regret with a touch. Is surprised that she doesn’t move away. Feels the heat of her coursing into his veins. Breathes again.

//

_”I hate them.”  
“I know.”_

She’s becoming more like she was when they first met. Embers of the fire she used to have inside beginning to spark again. He’s drawn to her warmth. Prays that maybe he, too, can ignite. Blaze away the darkness and sorrow. Hungers to feel the acid burn of his hatred as a tangible presence. Anything but this _nothing_ , this lack he has inside. This loss. 

//

Finally she makes him fight back. Throws him against a wall, across the room. Shoves him roughly to the floor. Pushes and batters against his brittle shell until inevitably it breaks. _He_ breaks. Fangs bared at her neck, hands clutching at her throat. He feels alive for the first time in months. Manages a shuddering breath before she drives splintered wood into his side. Pain blooms into life. Slashes of white and red flash across his vision. She turns and walks away, leaves him to face this new beginning.

He lies and watches a crimson stain spread across the floor. Rips the shard of wood from his side. Shudders a breath and revels in the pain of it. His world moves from static to a whirlwind of colour and emotion. He finally manages to stand at the heart of it. Bruised and bloodied but finally, irredeemably, himself again.

//

He finds her staring at the sunset through uneven glass panes. Her face bathed in the warmth of its final rays. A stark contrast to the tears drying on her cheeks. He doesn’t need to ask the cause. Sees her whisper her brother’s name to the approaching dusk. He knows a prayer for forgiveness when he sees one. Has offered up more than his share. Suddenly she’s in his arms, a heady mix of apologies and thanks. Desperate in her need to be understood.

//

Her breathing is harsh and uneven in his ear. He gasps as she sinks her teeth into the soft flesh of his neck, shudders as she licks across the rivulets of blood that stream down his chest. Her fingers trace a single drop as it courses downward, the tip of her tongue following behind. Leaves a path of electricity he can feel painted on the inside of his skin. He forces his eyes open as she takes him in her mouth, feels a shock jolt through him as her tongue swirls around him. Her pupils blown so wide that her eyes are unending pools of darkness, dragging him in.

She licks a broad stripe up his body. Pushes her hips hard against him. An unspoken demand. She kisses her way into his mouth. He can taste himself, sharp and salt on her tongue. She moans and he feels himself unraveling. The parts he has fought so hard to put back together threaten to split apart underneath her. His hands skim up her sides, mapping her body, memorising the shape of her. The curves that seem at once entirely familiar and totally foreign. He murmurs _Rebekah_ against her throat as she thrusts against him, bites down harder than he intends. Can barely think as the taste of her rushes to the back of his throat, full of the promise of life.

She suddenly sinks down onto him, all hot, wet heat. He grasps her hips, holds her frozen as the world spins, exhales her name in a whisper. His head drops as she slowly arches her back and begins to move. She leans towards him, lips swollen, stained red. Her fingers twine through his, grip as though she’ll never let him go. Warmth blossoms at the base of his spine, rushes like fire through his body. He shudders inside her as she collapses onto him. Sighs _Damon_. Like a vow. Blonde hair fans across his chest. Ropes of gold, binding them together.

//

She lies curled into him. As though he might be able to protect her. He wonders if they’ll ever be able to replace the absent parts of themselves. She doesn’t quite fit the shape of the missing spaces in his heart. But he tastes hope on her skin. Hears the promise of trust as she says his name. Sees a future he feared would never come. Closes his eyes and waits for the dawn.

//


End file.
